Dream Children: A Reverie By Charles Lamb

 

Dream Children: A Reverie

By Charles Lamb

Charles Lamb – About the Writer

✍️ Introduction

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) was a famous English essayist, poet, and critic of the Romantic period. He is best known for his personal and reflective essays collected in Essays of Elia. Lamb wrote in a warm, humorous, and deeply emotional style.

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📚 Early Life

• Born in London in 1775.

• Educated at Christ’s Hospital School, where he became close friends with poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

• Worked as a clerk in the East India Company for many years.

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💔 Personal Life & Struggles

Lamb’s life was marked by tragedy. His sister, Mary Lamb, suffered from mental illness and once accidentally killed their mother during a mental breakdown. Lamb devoted his life to caring for Mary and never married. This deep sense of sacrifice and loneliness influenced his emotional writing.

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Dream Children: A Reverie

Children love to listen to stories about their elders, when they were children; to stretch their imagination to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle or grandame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit that my little ones crept about me the other evening to hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than that in which they and papa lived) which had been the scene—so at least it was generally believed in that part of the country—of the tragic incidents which they had lately become familiar with from the ballad of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney-piece of the great hall; the whole story down to the Robin Redbreasts, till a foolish rich person pulled it down to set up a marble one of modern invention in its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice put out one of her dear mother’s looks, too tender to be called upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how religious and how good their great-grandmother Field was; how beloved and respected by everybody, though she was not indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and more fashionable mansion which he had purchased somewhere in the adjoining county; but still she lived in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she lived; which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and carried away to the owner’s other house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old tombs they had been used to see in the churchyard, and build them into the walls of a modern dwelling-house. Here John smiled, as much as to say, “That would be foolish indeed.” And then I told how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor; and how she was carried to her grave with so much ceremony and state, that it was as if some princess had been buried. And how in her youth she had been esteemed the best dancer—for many miles round; and how she was used to practise her steps in a large room, which was so famous for its old-fashioned furniture and tapestry; and how she would sometimes sit and read, when the company were gone, in one of the window-seats; and how she was fond of all the old plays, and had a reverence for the Bible, and would not have you speak lightly of it; and how she had once been frightened by a ghost (though I did not believe in ghosts); and how she would tell stories of these old times, which made the hair stand upon my head, though I am not easily frightened. And when I told them of my little cousin Bridget (for they were named after her), how she was lame, and how I loved her dearly; and how she used to teach me to spell, and would help me with my tasks; and how she had a beautiful face, and was a good and gentle creature; here Alice’s little right foot played an involuntary movement, till upon my looking grave, it desisted. And then I told how for seven long years I courted the fair Alice W——n; and how she slighted and rejected me; and how I bore it; and how she married another; and how I was never afterwards quite the same man; and how I loved her still, though she was no longer mine. At this point my children’s eyes began to glisten, and they whispered one to another; and suddenly turning to me, they said, “We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we children at all. We are nothing; less than nothing, and dreams.” And immediately they faded away; and I found myself quietly seated in my bachelor arm-chair, where I had fallen asleep, with the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side—but John L. (or James Elia) was gone for ever.